


Clarity

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, florid description of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 12:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As much as he hates being an accomplice, Greg won't leave Sherlock on his own when he's getting high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarity

Sherlock closed his eyes. He flexed his fingers as the narcotic slowly overwhelmed him, and sighed quietly. In the sweaty delusions just before the drug took hold, he was convinced he could feel it ebbing through his veins like a tide of warm honey — but once it had bubbled up to the base of his neck, enveloping his brain in its sweetly protective cocoon of clarity, he laughed at his own stupidity. 

Cocaine buoyed him out of the darkness of doubt and confusion. 

Across the room, Greg refused to look at him. The grey-haired inspector kept his eyes on the one window in Sherlock’s rotting flat, and drummed the baseline of a song that Sherlock was barely familiar with on the arm of his chair with his fingers. 

Sherlock took a deep breath and stretched out his long legs, revelling in the suddenly fluid nature of his own body. His hips lifted, his heels dug into the mattress, and his neck cracked as he rolled his head from side to side. 

Greg’s gaze flicked very briefly to the bed before retreating back to the window. 

Sherlock smiled and opened his eyes slowly. Already he felt a sense of awareness that no other living soul possessed. The cracks in his ceiling told him stories in a language only he could understand — regaled him with the history of the house, the lives of its previous tenants, and the violent nature of the man upstairs. He could read the weather in the pipes running up the wall in the corner, and the faint scent of ammonia clinging to the dust was proof that the woman downstairs did, indeed, have a cat. 

The only unanswerable question was one of human nature. Why anyone would voluntarily abandon use of a drug that gave such clear — such brilliantly clear — insight into the mechanics of the physical world was baffling to him. 

Lestrade seemed to have an answer, but Sherlock had no intention of asking. The policeman’s morality was one of many things not worth knowing. 

Sherlock flexed his fingers a second time before running his hand through his hair. “I’ll need to look at the briefcase again,” he told his surly companion. Greg grunted his acknowledgement. Sherlock let his head fall to the side slowly, sweeping his eyes over Greg in a slow, methodical search. 

“Don’t,” the older man growled. 

Sherlock’s smile twisted into a smirk. 

“As if looking at you could tell me anything I didn’t already know,” Sherlock quipped. Greg’s jaw tightened. “Sight is one of five senses, if you’d forgotten.”

Greg didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to understand — but he was in that stupid, shabby, little hole in the wall because of Sherlock. Sherlock’s gift for understanding things that completely eclipsed other people had brought him into that so-called friendship, and no matter how hard he ground his teeth together, he didn’t have the willpower to let the comment pass him by. 

“Let me guess,” he replied drily, “you can taste my bloody annoyance in the air.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Any lifelong smoker could do that.”

“Well then, what is it?” 

“You missed a beat,” Sherlock told him.

Greg’s eyes narrowed as he turned his head to glare at the young drug addict. “What?”

“In that song you were tapping,” Sherlock elaborated. “I’ve heard it in your flat before. You missed a beat when I moved.”

Greg looked away sharply. 

Sherlock’s bright eyes glittered mischievously. He loved being right.


End file.
